My BF’a mom lives in a separate small house on his property. It’s about 60 feet away. He has always placed his router in the back bedroom to allow her better access to his WiFi. The last few months his service got so bad he switched to a different provider (from DSL to cable). We were have constant issues with speeds and connections and finally realized that the router was in a bad spot. We’ve moved it and now have much better speeds, but that has just made hers worse. We’d like to run a CMx cat5 Ethernet cable across the yard to her house ( buried of course). What device do we put on the other end of that cable to allow her WiFi access from that point?

 

Does this help?
A single run of Ethernet cable is designed to work at a maximum distance of 100 meters, or 328 feet. A length longer than this can result in issues such as dropped packets, reduced performance and loss of signal, particularly when using Cat5 cable due to being limited to 100 Mbps.

 

Google "ethernet wifi extender"

At 60 feet you may be able to use a wireless extender located either at your house or at hers. I have a Netgear plug-in extender at my vacation house and just barely get a usable signal from my daughter's house 100 feet away through the woods. I considered a wired solution but since one purpose of my vacation home is to get away from technology I have resisted so far.

 

I agree with 2john02458. Many wireless extenders have an ethernet jack on them that allows the unit to be used as a WiFi hotspot, in addition to its primary usage as a wireless extender. I doubt that you'll have satisfactory results using the device as a wireless extender, however if you're willing to run an ethernet cable between the two buildings, you can use the extender to create a wireless access point with good speed. I'm sure you're aware of this, but you should purchase special ethernet cable that is "weatherproof" and meant for outdoor usage.

 

The simplest solution would be to run an ethernet cable from the main router over to the window, then get a $5 router from a thrift shop and set that up as an 'access point' facing the small building.

Are both buildings served by the same electric meter, or is there a separate meter for the guesthouse? I ask because you might have an issue with grounding & cross talk if you run cable between two different panels.

If both buildings are on the same meter, you could use "exterior grade" ethernet cable and string it above the ground like a clothes line. You might be able to could ALSO use a "powerline adapter" to supply internet from the main building over the existing copper wiring to the smaller building.

The term you're looking for is "access point" it means the router takes IN a network signal from ethernet and broadcasts it out as WiFi. The opposite is a "wireless bridge" which takes IN a WiFi signal and sends that out over ethernet. Essentially all routers can be reprogramed to act as an access point, a smaller number can be reprogrammed as a wireless bridge. Check around at the local thrift shops for old routers, they're usually under $10. The Westell 327, and Verizon Mi424WR, and most Linksys routers can be configured into an access point.

When you setup a 2nd WiFi source, you want to assign the same network name, "SSID" and password, but set the routers to different frequencies so they don't overlap. There are generally lots of tutorials on the web about how to set up a router as an access point.

 

I have both a comfast ac1200 ap wifi extender and a wavlink ac600 wifi extender to get the signal outside my stucco. Both work pretty well. 😍

 

"The simplest solution would be to run an ethernet cable from the main router over to the window, then get a $5 router from a thrift shop and set that up as an 'access point' facing the small building."

I already stated in my OP that we plan to run CMX ethernet cable from his house to the other. I actually have ordered a TP-Link AC750 - which according to the info online, can be set up as an access point. We plan to try that.


"Are both buildings served by the same electric meter, or is there a separate meter for the guesthouse? I ask because you might have an issue with grounding & cross talk if you run cable between two different panels."

I think each has its own meter - not positive but I think that is the case. CMX cable is used to connect two or more distinct structures.

 

My concern is: if the CMX cables have Cat6 style grounding and you have 2 different main breakers with 2 different grounding rods, you can have problems with ground loops, 60 cycle humming, getting a shock, or shorting things out, especially the first time you have a nearby lightning strike.
Cautionary example- we had a mortgage broker who rented space in our office building, had his laptop plugged in on the desk, just across the room was the printer & paper shredder. One day the paper shredder jammed on a paperclip, the shredder drew a huge amount of current and dropped the voltage at the shredder/printer outlet.
Turned out, the outlets were connected to different circuits. So when the voltage dropped, the printer cable was connected between 2 different voltages- that ended up melting the printer cable and frying the laptop.